Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 327 Editor's Choice: 30
-
One thing I can agree with Rebecca Traister about completely.
[Read the article: Scully have I loved]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dana Scully was my first female crush, but I couldn't have articulated that at the time. I was eleven.
Sure, Mulder was right more often, but only because of Scully's attention to detail is he even still alive. (Hermione Granger struck me immediately as very much a tribute to Scully in that regard, whether intentionally so or not.) And she had far better emotional development over the course of the show.
Only "Bad Blood" was not the best episode ever...that would be "Hollywood AD."
-
Don't worry about Atreyu...
[Read the article: What's in a bat-crap-crazy name?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The number of kids who will remember The Neverending Story is dwindling fast.
Bastian I don't mind so much--it can be short for Sebastian, which I like a lot.
-
@ KitchenGirl
[Read the article: What's in a bat-crap-crazy name?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A friend from a class in college had Galadriel for her middle name. Most people she told who knew where it was from thought it was cool as heck, though.
-
snarlingcoyote
[Read the article: "She was just in diapers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had wondered about the use of skeletal assessment, but here's what I wonder--would the extreme stress that these girls put on their bones and joints from an extremely young age skew the interpretation or accuracy of this kind of test? Many gymnasts are so much smaller than their age peers, not just in weight but overall frame, probably both from constant stress and nutritional/diet issues...I wonder if given that, the use of this kind of assessment would be accepted, or if coaches would argue successfully that you can't judge their gymnasts against growth charts for normal-height and weight girls.
Though, if you really can't, that's a whole 'nother indictment of how gymnastics treats young girls.
-
@ snarlingcoyote
[Read the article: "She was just in diapers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks! Fascinating info.
-
hijabs in fast food
[Read the article: Don't lose your head (scarves)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've seen hijabs at my Dunkin' Donuts in Brooklyn--I find it hard to believe that if safety is really the issue, there isn't some kind of precedent for how to work that out. But I am curious as to what the restaurant's side of the story is.
-
@ mizbinkley
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"You have to draw a line somewhere, and your line should be at an unambiguous point."
I would agree with you. But the Y chromosome is not that point.
A Y chromosome, all by itself, only kicks off the genetic/hormonal/environmental pathway to male-hood. You must have a Y chromosome to be a male. But having one doesn't *necessarily* make you male.
It's possible to have a mixture (called chimerism) of male and female cells in your body, yet still be a clear member of one sex:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j0pl363165w95071/
...or the other...
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m7676351451m2374/
I am all for preventing men from pretending to be women in order to compete at an advantage. But there's just not that much evidence that that's happening.
And the Y chromosome is neither definitive in all cases, nor unambiguous. We still don't have a single unambiguous point for what defines gender.
-
@ dick dworkin
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"See, see, that "man" has two X chromosomes and that "woman" has a Y chromosome, so all gender is a social construct, it's proven by science!"
Not at all--rather it's that science has *not* proven what defines gender. That's not to say it's all a social construct, but that science doesn't totally understand how it works yet.
And there are biological men with two X chromosomes. The genotypes XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) and XXXY produce males. X's don't overpower Y's when it comes to gender determination. As long as you have one Y, you can--but don't always--turn out a male.
-
I actually laughed at the Got Milk ad
[Read the article: Stepford moms choose Jif]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really thought that one was just in poor taste more than it was sexist.
And hey, calcium really does help relieve PMS....
-
One of Cary's best answers
[Read the article: I'm isolated in a depressed urban area ... and now my parents have moved in with me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Had me in tears, actually.
Combine Cary's beautiful advice with that of the above posters: get your finances in order and get a dog or cat from your local shelter.
-
Wow.
[Read the article: Stop rape, punish victims?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think I agree with Tracy for the first time ever.
Drinking is not negligent behavior the way that running out in traffic is. One can drink, even be drunk, without being debilitated. I'm a huge proponent of using your intuition and just not being stupid to keep yourself out of bad situations. But alcohol cannot be a contributing factor to rape without there being a rapist, who by definition has a will of his own that he's rather intent on imposing upon you.
Did anyone ask whoever thought of this whether he considers that he's making himself more vulnerable to rape when *he's* drunk?
-
Unintended connotations in advertising
[Read the article: "WTF" of the day: "Dive In!" underwear ... for kids]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]True story:
I was briefly assigned to a promotional street team. There was a series of ads recently out at the time touting the health benefits of peanuts. A dozen of us patrolled sidewalks in the mornings, handing out mini packets of peanuts, wearing big foam peanut-shaped hats, and t-shirts that said, above an image of a guy's palm full of peanuts...
"Fight heart disease with one hand."
No one on the team said anything about it. I really don't know if no one else realized the implication, if my mind is really that much dirtier than most other people's, or if everyone else on the team decided that they didn't want to look like the one with the dirty mind by saying something.
Which is probably how the motto got on the t-shirt to begin with. From the copywriter responsible, all the way up the chain of command to the printer, no one wanted to look like the one with his or her mind in the gutter, and just didn't say anything, even if they realized how wrong it was.